He was born, shortly after his thirty-first birthday, at the bottom of a bottle of rum, in a boom town bar. He walked a crooked line out of the bar, straight out of the lives of those who knew him. The doting parents. The loving wife. The frolicsome friends. The dependable colleagues. An arrhythmic lope led him far away from all those who depended on him. All those with needs. And wants. And obligations. The city, had many cracks. He found one. And with no fuss whatsoever, slipped comfortably through. Time passed.Masked in graceless anonymity, mired in the accumulated grime of months without soap and water, he scratched his bristly, lice covered jaw, and discovered how to smile again. His, now, were the stand-up bars that were packed at 9 am.His, now, the backdoors of the idly-dosa joints, with kindly cooks. His, now, shady nooks in leafy parks with cold concrete for comfort. She, found him there one day. Smiling in his sleep. Wrapped in words that told the story of the rich and shameless. Covered in the comfort known only to those, with nothing left to lose.She looked down, a barely discernible twitch, on her mirthless lips. To the perceptive, it would have appeared as though she hesitated for the briefest of moments. One millionth, of a nanosecond. The perceptive, could easily have been mistaken. With a languid ease that bespoke aeons of repetition, she swung the scythe.

4.8.07

I'm convinced that somewhere, someone in this city has found a way to solidify memes of idiocy into some kind of micron level dust, which they have sprinkled all over the coke our glorious leaders snort with their evening whiskey-and-curd-rice. "Proof", you scream. Very well, Your Graces.Very well.The Govt. of Karnataka outsources construction of a flyover at a major intersection, to an outfit from UP - a state renowned for upright business practices and impeccable honesty. Years after the deadline passed, the GoK made a fetching display of naivete and evinced convincing disappointment that the project was still not complete. Of course, now that it has been completed, everyone's so busy patting themselves on the back, that they've conveniently overlooked the tons of scrap and debris that lie around like orgasmic detritus of Transformers mating. More, Your Graces? But of course.Real estate prices are through the roof. Everyone from the assistant bum washer of the quasi-sub-registrar, to the white kurta brigrade, is raking it in. Now, the city is over-crowded. It's primed to implode. And all those lovely IT firms that the GoK is lending its collective arse to, threaten to flitter away to Chennai, or Hyderabad, with their dainty little digital noses held high in the air. So the minions of the mighty, those masters of mental masturbation, that holy order of organised onanism, the BDA, come up with a Master Plan. This, is the plan. Open more residential areas, for commercial purposes. And increase the height to sq.ft. ratio for construction. Brilliant.Not convinced of the theory I postulate, Your Graces? Read on. Shedding faux tears all over the faux leather of their gigantic offices, the babus decide to apply an enema to the city's constipated channels, by building a Metro rail system.

Holes, have been dug. Boards, have been placed. And a deadline has been set. Given that I pass these proposed sites for posts twice a week, I can say with some authority, that I have seen sweet fuck all happening around them, for months now. And last, but not least, Your Eminences, as a little post-coital dribble down the thigh of this once fair, now bloated city, the aftermath of the fucked-up flyovers, was this: the men in charge have decided that henceforth, only underpasses will be used to alleviate Bangalore's clogged arteries. whether they're needed, or not. I submit that if these pinheads in power are not ingesting my proposed powdered idiocy memes, then they're all part of a vast conspiracy to de-stabilise planet Earth, wrought by the dog-headed denizens of Sirius B who are looking for a little more room to raise a leg in.